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How to Laser Engrave White on Red Engraving Plastic Using CorelDraw

red-harley-560x315

A lot of people have problems with plastics that either have a red or blue top on white or vice versa a white top and either a red or white core. The problem that people have is typically a contamination of the colour that invades the white and discolours the white core. In some of the earlier days of laser engraving I use to have a lot of problems with the Rowmark Lasermark series. However this problem for me has become a non issue since the release of our new Encore laserable product. This product has a very good acrylic core and the pigments from the colours do not migrate like they do on other plastics. However there is one thing as a laser engraver that you have to do and that is use the least amount of power that you can. This is not only in raster engraving but also in vector engraving. The problem that people have is that they use way to much power. In this video I am going at 100% speed, 19% power and 600 DPI on a 60 watt laser. DO NOT USE WHAT YOUR LASER SUPPLIER SAYS – TEST YOUR MATERIALS WITH YOUR LASER. Click here

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Creating a Group of Hearts Along a Bigger Heart in CorelDraw

hearts

Here is a request from a customer to create a big heart made up of a bunch of smaller hearts that follow along the shape of the heart. This was easy to do in CorelDraw using the blend command. I have used this command a number of times to create everything from dashes to ropes to stars. … Continue Reading

Doing Photos in CorelDraw with your Laser Engraver – Introduction

Laser Samples

Laser  Engraving or Sublimating Photographs

One of the biggest issues that faces us as engravers is reproducing photos onto a variety of products. Reproducing photos is not easy – even for those of us who have done a lot of it. Part of the problem is that there are so many substrates to work on and so many different types of photographs. There are some off the shelf programs that have tried to make doing photos easier but they tend to have mixed results. Programs such as PhotoLaser Plus, 1 Touch Photo and PhotoGrav provide these so called one click fits all solutions. PhotoLaser and PhotoGrav have gone one step further in that they will also give you the ability to tweak the image from within their software and have it try and display the image on a simulated display of the material you are working on. This tweaking can give you better results. However my experience with these programs is that they are again hit and miss. Why they are hit and miss can be caused by a number of factors and when you understand these factors you can achieve a better chance of getting it right. Which is why I am doing this series of articles. Hopefully I can clear up some of the confusion that rains down on this topic – and not only in our industry.  … Continue Reading

Set Up Lesson – Changing the Colours in a Logo in CorelDraw

tiger

"I have a question. I have attached a logo.

Will it engrave properly on the encore gold and black, the logo is coloured and if I convert it to b & w it looks awful, am I doing it right
Chris"
This is a pretty standard question that I get from customers. So let us go through the techniques to engrave this logo. I am going to show you how to change the colours in a vector image.

… Continue Reading

I Cannot Import an AI file into CorelDraw

ai_file_import

This is typically more prevalent on early versions of CorelDraw up to X4. However I have seen it happen in X5. If you are having troubles getting AI (Adobe Illustrator) files into CorelDraw than open them up in Adobe Reader and than re save them as a PDF. Then open them up in CorelDraw. This tutorial will show you how to do this. I will assume you have the latest version of Adobe reader on your computer which is free so there is no reason not to have it.

… Continue Reading

Lasering a Photo onto a Glass Part 2 – Using CorelDraw

girls pic

This is the second part of my tutorial on lasering photos onto glass. This example came from a seminar I did with some of my customers. This photo is approximately 50 years old. We had to get rid of some creases to get it looking at least good enough for the laser machine. Download the sample file

Remember that this is only the first step in this process. You need to get your power and speeds set properly and watch this video on how to laser glass – How to Laser Engrave Glass

… Continue Reading

Lasering a Photo onto a Glass Part 1 – Removing the Background In CorelDraw / PhotoPaint

girls pic

One of the hardest techniques to learn is creating photos on glass. It is not easy and requires you to know how to adjust photos in CorelDraw. To get the best photos requires the use of a transfer mask typically. Although you do not have to use a transfer mask I tend to find the best results are achieved when you use a transfer mask. For more info on the actual lasering technique of lasering on glass go to my Lasering a Photo on Glass video. The photo we are using is a old “black and white photo from 50 years ago. It had to be scanned and fixed up (repair creases) before I could laser it. I like this photo because this is a very indicative type of photo that one would receive in a retail environment. Sometimes when we use laser suppliers photos they are to good and sometimes do not give us a good actual example. This photo was given to me during a training tutorial I was giving and these are the actual files we created.
Download the sample file

… Continue Reading

Creating Vertical Text in CorelDraw

October 7, 2010 CorelDraw Help No Comments
vertical text

One of the more buried techniques in CorelDraw is the ability to created text that is vertical. That is it runs North South and has one letter per line. You can type a letter one at a time and press enter but the alignment is not always right. This Technique is fast and does the job. Check out the video on Vertical Text in CorelDraw

… Continue Reading

My Plotter File (.plt) Has Bad Curves

plt

Although I see less and less use of the .plt file for import I still occasionally get questions on using the .plt or plotter. One of the common issues when importing or exporting a plt file is that the curves will break down and not be smooth. This can be easily resolved by increasing the curve resolution in the export filter. Note this same issue was prevalent when I used to get files from AutoCad where the 0′s are more a hexagon shape

… Continue Reading

Using the Power Trace in CorelDraw Part 1

trace

One way to increase the perceived value of your product offering is to include a clients logo with that product. If you want to impress your client and provide them with the best looking product you can do than offer to reproduce there logo. Not only will they be impressed but they will be more inclined to pay you top dollar for that product. The one problem with offering to reproduce a clients artwork is that the artwork that they supply is not in either a good format (ie traced) or may be in a bad quality web format (gif, jpeg, png). In this tutorial well will look at tracing a one colour good quality logo. Available in X3, X4 and X5. See our video on CorelTrace

… Continue Reading

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